


Of Flight and Falling

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: AU where they make an example out of him, Angst, Enjolras-centric, F/M, Gen, M/M, basically it's sad okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 11:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They used to call me Apollo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Losing the Cynic

They used to call me Apollo. We couldn’t use our real names, not if we wanted to continue dodging the inspectors’ attempts to catch us, and Apollo was the one that stuck to me. Naturally, the government didn’t want a coup on their hands, but we were convinced the tide of the people’s fortune was changing. And there I was, at the helm of the rebellion, churning up waves of unrest. The people would rise up to fight for their freedom, and we would lead the rush into a new world, the generals in the war against injustice—we could not afford to lose even one battle.  


We built up a barricade out of furniture, and I stood at the top with a bloody red flag and heralded a new dawn for us to duel with the government’s soldiers. There were 30 of us and 300 of them. We were supposed to die, but we weren’t supposed to lose.  


It was a massacre. I could only continue fighting as I heard behind me the screams of those who were killed begging for the help of the passive citizens. The people had failed to rise, and so the death of a few for the sake of a cause became the death of all for naught.  


I was the last one unscathed when they found me in the upper room of the café, our meeting place when the others still lived. They shot a familiar drunkard as he slept at one of the tables, a man who was one of us despite being a cynic who didn’t believe in our cause. I watched from my place before the window where I waited. Where before there might have been anger at their cruelty, there was only the relief that they’d left him asleep when they did it. I could still hear my comrades’ screams, though they had since been choked off by death.  


They wouldn’t just let me die among my followers, the friends I’d gotten killed. Instead they cuffed me and led me away, taking my flag and setting fire to it on the street. I was the first but I had to be the last, the example of what would happen to any who dared challenge the monarchy. The people had been too afraid to help us, and that fear was only going to grow now that we’d failed.  


I’ve been tied to this post under the scorching sun and bone-chilling rain for ten days with no sustenance, and I can feel my body giving up the way my soul already has. They’re all dead. Freedom is farther from sight now than ever before in my lifetime, and I am at fault. The cynic was right; the world is always cruel, the battle lost before it ever begins.  


I’ve become like him now, the man I once scorned for his hopelessness. I believe in nothing. There is nothing to believe in. It all died upon the breaking of the barricade. My cause has become nothing more than a marionette, and the puppeteer is the regime we tried to take down. I have become a symbol of their power instead of ours, just another Icarus who tried to soar higher than I am capable. It was only because I made it so high that I had so far to fall.


	2. Awakening the Cynic

I woke up comfortable and miserable. My hands were free, and my mind was trapped. Even before I started working out what had happened and how I’d gotten from a platform in the middle of a courtyard, exposed to the elements, to a warm bed, I was reliving my nightmare. The stench of death was everywhere, even permeating through the most comfortable sheets I’d ever felt, where thirty days ago I would have predicted I might finally feel safe. Safety was an illusion. When I found the strength to sit up—and the strength was barely there—it was with caution that I did it. I’d thought they aimed to kill me, and I didn’t see what other goals they could have, but perhaps even I had underestimated the cruelty of the monarchy, I who was a crusader against the cruelty I knew. Perhaps this was a trick of the mind, to make me think I was safe and then leave me somewhere for dead again. They didn’t just want an example out of me, they wanted me broken. Couldn’t they see I already was?  


The room was far more spacious than anything I could imagine them using for a criminal sentenced to die, though. Besides the bed I was in, there was a dresser, a desk, and a mirror, and more floor space than I could imagine being used in a bedroom. A window took up the majority of one wall, and the sight of it made my stomach turn. Smoke from the barricade on fire rose up in the sky I could see through the window, but I blinked and it was gone. My attention was pulled away from the past at the sound of footsteps approaching the other side of the door. Whether it was a trap or something inexplicable had happened, I was about to find out.  


The man I saw standing in the doorway was impossible. He was dead; I’d watched him get shot in the beginning of the confrontation at the barricade. I couldn’t call it a battle, even—if it had been a battle, it had been one in a war of attrition. Maybe he’d gotten out of there quickly, before I’d been able to notice, and the one I saw shot was somebody I mistook for him in the confusion. Everyone was either shot or otherwise killed, anyway; it didn’t matter whom I’d mistaken for him. For the first few moments after he entered my line of vision, we could only stare at each other. He had one arm in a sling—so he had been hurt—but besides that, he was positively glowing. The barricade had carved grief into his face, but she had filled in the cracks with love. This was no trick of the mind, nor a trick of another.  


“You’re alive.” He smiled back at me, how did he still know how to smile, and came forward to sit at the edge of the bed.  


“Yes. And so are you, just barely.” I remembered when I should have died in that courtyard, when I should have died in the upper room of the café, when I should have died fighting on the barricade with my companions, and I could have wept, but I didn’t have it in me to express such a strong emotional response.  


“Why?”  


It was clear by the confusion on his face that he didn’t understand the point of my question.


	3. Becoming the Cynic

“What do you mean?” He’d always had trouble understanding the more somber topics we occasionally discussed at our meetings. Most of the time, I was trying to impassion them, not sadden them, but sometimes sadness was conductive to stronger passions. Sometimes sadness just sucked everything else out of you, leaving you a soulless shell, a cynic worth no more than the man next to you, who means nothing regardless. He never understood the darkest undertones of our cause, and I’d never wanted to understand them even though I did, but now I was living them and there was nothing I could do to change that.  


“Why am I here?” If he was responsible, he should have just left me there. What would I do now? I’d devoted my entire life to the revolution, and it had failed. I’d failed them all. I certainly hadn’t planned on escaping myself; there was nothing left to do but give up.  


“I’ve been bedridden due to my wound, but imagine my surprise when I ventured out and found you alive! You wouldn’t have been for much longer, but I went back under the cover of nightfall to cut you free. You were nearly comatose, I’m only glad I got out when I did—“  


“I am not free.” I clenched my fist around the sheets, not caring that they were likely fragile and expensive and unlikely to be the kind of durable fabric that held up against being crumpled so roughly. “None of us are. Not even the king himself is free.”  


“Are you okay, Apollo?”  


“Don’t call me that.” I forced my body to move, pushing the sheets away and sliding my legs towards the edge only to be stopped by a concerned hand on my shoulder. “It’s Enjolras. There’s no point in hiding it anymore. I’m not Apollo; I never even came close.”  


“Ap-Enjolras. What’s happened? What did they do to you?”  


“They opened my eyes to how the world really works! I saw it as if I was a child—no, I was worse. Gavroche saw the world better than I ever did. And it got everyone killed, because they trusted me not to lead them astray.” I pushed myself out of bed on shaky legs. “I believed in too much that never existed.”  
“Please, stay in bed. You’re going to hurt yourself.”  


“Fuck if I care!” The vehemence in my response silenced him, and he recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “You should have left me where I was. I’d be better off dead than this!” Now it seemed as though he couldn’t keep himself from standing with me—against me—despite his disapproval of my standing in the first place.  


“You’re insane if you thought I would leave you to die. After all that you’ve done for all of us?”  


“And to what end? We’re the only ones left alive, if you can even say I’m capable of living. I’m just like he was, now; believing in nothing really does make you incapable of living. He said I’d see, but I’m only more convinced.” I felt unsteady, but I refused to lean against something, resigning myself to the slight sway in my stance for now.  


“Enjolras, please sit down.”  


“I won’t!” Someone had removed my ruined clothes and dressed me in more proper sleeping clothes, but there was a clean set of street clothes on top of the dresser on the other side of the room. I limped my way there and dressed myself as quickly as I could manage (which wasn’t very quickly). “I won’t be a burden to anyone like this.”  
“Boys, what’s going on in here?”


	4. Challenging the Cynic

I turned to find an unfamiliar woman standing in the doorway, surprised to find that I didn’t care enough to be relieved that she’d come in after I’d finished dressing. I really was more like him than myself. It almost felt like his running commentary on everything was still there, but it was in my head now instead of coming from his mouth.  


“Oh, you haven’t met Ap-Enjolras yet, have you? This is my fiancé, C-“  


“I figured as much. It’s a pleasure.” Without the inflection in my voice, I sounded completely uncaring even to my own ears. That would be because I was, but for some reason they refused to believe that.  


“So you’re the revolution’s beloved Apollo? You’re exactly like I imagined,” she spoke. I raised an eyebrow at him before I could remember that I didn’t care. What had he been spreading?  


“We found his sketchbook in the café.” Frowning, I pulled on my jacket, stained and damaged beyond repair, but thankfully still there, draped over a bedpost. “Enjolras, don’t leave—“  


“I have no reason to stay, here or anywhere.”  


“You could stay here with us, find the right girl to spend your life with, be happy—“  


I whipped around in anger, forgetting my weakness for long enough to shoot back a retort. “I’ve already met the one I wanted to spend my life with, and I could do nothing but watch as they shot him while he slept!”  


Silence fell. I took the opportunity as the two of them stared at me in shock to make my way out of the room, disregarding the fact that I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I just picked a direction and took it, hoping I would get to an exit fairly quickly.  


As it happened, I found an exit before anyone found me, and I stumbled onto the streets of Paris as if in a daze. It only took a few blocks to recognize where I was, and I started seeing them everywhere. Everyone I’d failed had lived in these streets with me; everyone I’d cared for had died in these streets and I should have joined them. I stumbled around as aimlessly as I now lived, images of the dead following me as if I was a necromancer calling them to me. I recognized every face, saw them all as I passed their favorite spots, missed them with an ache I couldn’t even begin to describe as their specters congregated around me.  


I stopped in front of the café I should have died in, the café he had died in. Did he even know he was dead? Did he wake up in the afterlife, disoriented and alone, because I hadn’t been able to stop the soldiers from carrying out the death sentence I’d led him to? I suppose if the concept of an afterlife held strong, he wouldn’t be alone, as there were certainly plenty of dead friends to find, but he would be lost. It was no secret that he’d cared for me—more than he should, more than I deserved—and he claimed to believe in nothing else. I should have told him while I could.  


I walked inside. I needed a drink.


	5. Inspiring the Cynic

I woke up in the same unfamiliar bed I’d been deposited in after being broken out of the chains in the courtyard. I’d apparently been found some time after my flight, and I’d been returned precisely back where I started. If I’d had the energy or the will, I would have laughed at the irony that my misguided life had turned into such a perfect metaphor for life itself. Life is a cycle of unjust agony, repeating your mistakes or making new ones as soon as you’ve learned from the old.  
Life is pain, and everyone is a goddamn masochist.  


I couldn’t remember what had happened after I’d left yesterday. Clearly I’d been sought out; I never would have come back on my own. They had apparently found me before the authorities did, and I couldn’t decide whether to be thankful or frustrated. My head was pounding, and the light streaming in from that goddamn fucking unnecessary window was like screams echoing in my ears.  


Or maybe the light just hurt, and the screams were coming from my own head. Unwilling to think of that, I forced myself closer to the window, staring out of it as if exposure would force me to get used to the unbearable brightness. I clutched the fabric of the drapes in one hand, staring blankly down at the streets of Paris below. My stomach was protesting my movement and my head hurt, but so did everything else; it didn’t matter.  


“It’s like you’re turning into him.” It was him again—the other him, not the one I missed so much he stole my soul. I didn’t say anything, just stared, waiting for him to elaborate. “The drinking, the bitterness… You’ve said it before; he believed in nothing.”  


“There is nothing to believe in,” I murmured.  


“He believed in you.”  


“Look where it got him. Look where it got all of them.”  


“He would hate this.”  


“He’s not here to tell me so.”  


He shook his head in exasperation. “So what, you’re acting like this just because no one’s going to say you can’t?”  


“I’m acting like this because it’s over. Everything’s over. There is no revolution, only those who don’t care and those who are afraid. There are no martyrs, only those who are dead and those who live.” I missed the passion, the fervor that used to carry me through life as if sweeping me along a tidal wave. It was gone now. There was nothing to be passionate for; the monarchy had a firm grip on power and none were strong enough to break it who cared to try.  


“It’s never over, Enjolras. Everyone finds happiness in their own way. It just depends on how far or how close they’re willing to look.”  


I stared. That… actually made sense. Perhaps the problem was that none of us ever looked in the right place. Everyone is a masochist, after all. It was time to look again, and I think I knew just where to start.


	6. Seeking the Cynic

As it happened, the clothes I’d been wearing at the barricade were still tucked into a drawer in the house. As soon as I was alone (the two lovebirds taking a walk in the gardens), I donned them and trekked back to the café. What supplies we had left were still stashed there—after the barricade that consisted of a bottle of booze and a fully loaded pistol.  


It would be enough.  


I downed the bottle as I walked, tucking the pistol into the back of my pants. They wouldn’t miss me right away, but they would soon, and I needed to be done with what I had in mind before then, or they’d never let me do it. It was nearing midday; the streets would be at their busiest then. That would be the time for me to strike, or I would miss my chance.  


I finished the bottle just as I reached the square, the courtyard with the police building in it, and suddenly I realized that it must have been his, the one I was doing this for. No one else would put the value of a bottle on par with the guns we needed for our revolution. Suddenly, I found that I was angry. The injustice for which I had only felt relief that it wasn’t worse made me furious, and the goal I’d already set wasn’t all I came here to accomplish. I wanted revenge.  
I threw the bottle through the window with all the force I could muster—it would end here. I had to finish what I started. I couldn’t leave the people more afraid than they’d ever been, in more danger than they were before I intervened. Let them have the last of their revolutionaries. I only wanted one man. I only wanted the freedom granted by death.  
What else could make all men equal, after all?  


One familiar soldier was the first one to exit the building. He was alone for now, and I couldn’t believe they thought he would be enough to catch their revolutionary fugitive. He was my target, after all. This felt like a temptation—shoot him now and run, start another revolution, don’t let it end here. But it had to end here. I couldn’t risk anything further. The people could survive under this desolate oppression, and they would rise when they were ready. Monarchy would not reign forever, and I would take some of its strength with me or die trying. I had nothing to fear from death, even though the other who was left would be appalled at my choice. Who wanted to live to see their goals met, anyway? Meeting all of your goals seemed to me the worst thing that could happen to a person. That left nothing else to strive for.  


There, in the middle of the busiest street in Paris, at the busiest time of day, I pulled out the gun and shot him, watched his corpse hit the pavement with a face carved of stone. I thought I’d feel regret, or relief, or anything at all, but it didn’t even feel real. The gunshot brought out more officers though, not that it was a surprise, and suddenly I was standing right back there where I lost all of them, surrounded by their ghosts as I faced their killers. I leveled my gun at the nearest one and shot two before being felled by the rest.  


The people deserved to keep at least one martyr.


End file.
